The present invention generally relates to cargo transport condition information tracking, communication, and management. More specifically, various embodiments of the present invention relate to a real-time cargo condition management system and a related method of operation with remote real-time vehicle on-board diagnostics (OBD) monitoring.
Conventional cargo transport tracking methods typically involve periodic barcode scanning or RFID tag readings at various transportation hubs between an origination address and a destination address. For example, a package may have an attached barcode sticker, which is scanned at an initial point of reception (e.g. a delivery company store), one or more delivery company transportation hubs (e.g. centralized package processing facilities, airports, or other transport facilities during transit), delivery trucks, and at a final delivery point (e.g. a customer delivery address). In the conventional cargo transport tracking method, a delivery company personnel or a customer is able to enter a tracking number in a computer-networked user interface to check a current progress of the package correlated to the tracking number.
The information provided by the “current progress” in the conventional cargo transport tracking method is inherently limited to a location history and a timestamp for the barcode scan or the RFID tag reading. Conventional cargo transport tracking methods do not provide any sensory or environmental details related to real-time cargo conditions during transit. For example, if a customer wants to track or investigate why a supposedly-fresh box of strawberries was delivered rotten and squished, the conventional cargo transport tracking method fails to provide abilities to investigate and track the cause of the problem. The lack of problem source tracking in the conventional cargo transport tracking method may unnecessarily drive up shipping insurance costs, while reducing chances of eliminating repeat package content damage problems.
Therefore, it may be desirable to devise a novel electronic system that enables real-time cargo transport condition tracking, communication, and management to capture and provide a detailed record of past and current transport conditions beyond a mere location tracking capability. Furthermore, it may also be desirable to devise this novel electronic system to be synchronized with a vehicle's on-board diagnostics (OBD) unit to correlate the vehicle's various sensory outputs to a package inside the vehicle's cargo space to provide sensory and/or environmental details for cargo transport conditions.
Moreover, it may be also desirable to add environmental sensors inside or near the vehicle's cargo space to provide other useful sensory details associated with the package in transit. In addition, it may also be desirable to provide a remote real-time vehicle OBD monitoring conducted by a delivery company or another third party to minimize package content damages during the vehicle transport.